


i will crawl from the rubble of what you used to be

by wjjmwmsn5



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Rey/Rose Tico - Freeform, Force-Sensitive Finn, M/M, Trans Poe Dameron, reylos don't interact, the major character death isn't like what you think but. it's there, the soulmates is also not what you think but it's Also There, trans poe isn't mentioned in the first chapter but it will be and It's There
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 06:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13381863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wjjmwmsn5/pseuds/wjjmwmsn5
Summary: finn and poe will find each other in a thousand, million, billion ways, try as the universe might to tear them apart.





	i will crawl from the rubble of what you used to be

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be sad i guess but. anyway yeah. i'm,,,, fully in love with this fic idea and it might not make perfect sense what i'm doing until next chapter but. next chapter it should make more sense
> 
> please let me know if you enjoy!!!! validation is,,, lovely
> 
> i'm transpoedameronss on tumblr if you wanna come request something!! 
> 
> the poetry at the beginning of the chapter is also by me, i'm gonna write a little poem for each chapter so i hope everybody likes those too!!!

_ tear him from me, _

_ i say to the universe. _

_ i dare you to tell me _

_ that i am not fierce enough _

_ to take him right back _

 

_ tear him from me,  _

_ i say to the universe. _

_ use whatever you need _

_ but i will find my love _

_ if it rips the galaxy to pieces _

 

_ tear him from me,  _

_ i say to the universe, _

_ and i will crawl from the rubble _

_ of what you used to be _

_ and we will be unbound  _

* * *

Rey was on the ground, and everything else stopped. He knelt next to her, cradling her, hand on her face, desperate. “Rey,” he breathed, and the battle around him ceased. “Rey, no. No, no.” He was babbling and there was a tight pain in his chest.

“ _ Traitor! _ ” Kylo Ren screamed behind him. It jolted him to the present, and he felt white-hot anger. He felt around for Rey’s lightsaber, the snow chilling his fingers as he picked it up. 

“That lightsaber—it belongs to me.” 

“Come get it,” he said, seething. This man had killed Han, had thrown Rey so hard that it had dropped Finn’s heart into his stomach, and he directed all of his anger at him now, with the blue saber in his hands. 

Red. Blue. Flash after flash, mixing, swirling, an elaborate dance that blended things together until they were purple, and the white snow flurried around them. He fell, got back up again. The red seeped through his jacket and burned his skin and he screamed, slashed back, and the dance began again—until his saber was torn away from him, flying away into the snow. And before he knew it, his back was screaming, but only until he hit the snow, and then it was freezing cold darkness.

**I. we will be unbound**

* * *

Finn woke up with a gasp.

The ship was chilly. Poe liked to keep it cold, and Finn complained, but they kept it cold anyway. He couldn’t argue for long when Poe said,  _ It’s cuddling weather, babe. _

Poe was stirring next to him, jarred out of whatever dreams he may have been having by Finn’s sudden movements. His eyes were bleary and his arm was still trapped underneath Finn. 

He sat up slowly, looking around their bedroom. Everything felt off, like someone had entered their spaceship in the middle of the night and shifted everything a few centimeters to one side. 

“What’s wrong?” Poe asked, voice groggy, eyes shut again. He looked like he desperately wanted to go back to sleep. They had had a long day yesterday, Finn remembered. It was a jolting feeling, like someone had logged the memory back into the system of his brain. 

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered, slipping out of bed. He grabbed the extra blanket and wrapped it around himself, shivering now that he was away from Poe’s warmth. 

“Come back,” Poe whined, but once Finn was at the doorway, looking back at him, he saw that he had already flipped back over and had half his face buried in the pillow. It brought a smile to his face, even through the discontent roiling inside him. 

He went to the cockpit, sat in Poe’s pilot chair. BB-8 rolled over to him, slowly, beeping confusedly.

“Yeah, it’s a bit early for me to be up, I know,” he told them. 

He looked out at the planet that they were landed on. They were in the middle of nowhere for now, mostly because they had been running from someone they had stolen from in the past and had been desperate for anywhere out-of-the-way to settle down for the night.

It was surreal. A small flurry of snow drifted down to the ground, and the lights in the ship were so low at nighttime that most of the light coming into him was from the crimson moons. He felt like they were isolated from the rest of the galaxy here. Like they were at peace but also like everything he had ever known had been torn from him suddenly. 

BB-8 kept beeping at him, but he wasn’t paying much attention. A dream was resurfacing—just flashes, but they were disturbing. He still didn’t know binary well enough to listen to the beeps and focus. 

“Shh for a minute, BB-8,” he said gently. BB-8 still looked at him like they had taken a great offense to that, despite the fact that there was no face on the droid. It was funny how well he could read the droid’s emotions after having lived with them for so long. 

He shut his eyes to the snow and the gentle moonlight, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself. All he could see, all he could  _ remember _ , from his dream was a couple bright flashes. There was a lot of red, but perhaps a bit of blue too. He ached all over—maybe in the dream, but it felt real. 

He stood back up after a moment, stepping around BB-8 and finding a jacket so he wouldn’t have to grasp the blanket anymore. He didn’t think he could go back to sleep, so he figured he would embrace being awake so early. 

BB-8 resumed their beeping, and Finn listened as idly he could. He wished it hadn’t taken so long for him to get around to learning binary. Now that he was, there was no excuse for him to not listen to the droid’s beeping, but it also required a great deal of focus since he hadn’t gotten a headstart when he first met BB-8 and Poe.

“No, he’s still asleep,” Finn told them, keeping his voice low as he went into the kitchen. He pulled out a coffee cup and went over to their machine, filling it as he yawned. 

When he first came to this ship with Poe, it was barely livable, and they had to stop all the time to sleep in comfortable beds where they could wake up immediately to coffee. They had made it a reality in here once it became apparent that hideout nights like this one would be more manageable with all the extra little comforts they could install. They had made it their own. 

He sat in the main hold, exhausted. The coffee was still too hot to drink, but he held it close to his chest and felt the ghosts of its heat through the thin material of his t-shirt. He considered waking Poe. They needed to get the fuck out of the system. Maybe make their way to somewhere else in the outer rim. It would be easiest to just let their cargo go, set their followers at peace, but they needed the money. Badly. 

Finn shut his eyes. Sashu would have bounty hunters on their trail soon if they didn’t pay him back. It seemed like somewhere along the way, their lives had become one debt after the other, and past dreams of bathing in the wealth they gained from their smuggling slowly died out. 

Once his coffee was gone, he walked to the bedroom. Poe was still in the same position as before, an arm draped over the side of the bed. Finn crawled back in and put a hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder. 

“Poe, wake up,” he said, leaning down to him. He pressed a kiss to his head. Poe groaned. “Hey, c’mon, wake up. We should get going before morning.”

Poe’s eyes opened again and he twisted, looking up at Finn. His eyes crinkled, a small and sleepy smile on his face, and it looked like he saw the stars in Finn’s eyes. He was always the optimistic one between the two of them, and all it took to help him find hope in their bleak situation was tender moments like these. 

“Still very early,” he said, voice gruff from sleeping. 

“Well, we’re still very fucked, so get up,” Finn teased. He pressed a kiss to his lips and got out of bed again. “You know what?” He grinned at him, his mood lifted considerably after seeing Poe’s smile. He walked to the door and then turned around to look at him. “I’m turning the heat up.” 

He walked back down the hallway again, laughing at Poe’s desperate, tired  _ Noooooooo  _ drifting through the ship. He went to the screen and tapped on temperature settings, turning it up a bit so he wouldn’t feel like he was freezing to death in there. 

Soon Poe was out in the main hold too, patting BB-8 on the head and gravitating toward the coffee machine. “It’s snowing,” he commented. He yawned as the machine whirred. 

Finn nodded. It had picked up a bit. “It is.”

He went over to the window and looked out, saw the sun peeking up over the horizon. The orange light glinted off the snow, and the hills covered in feet of it set them apart from everything around them. He imagined looking down on them from above: the black speck of the ship surrounded by an endless wasteland of white. 

Someday, he wanted to pay off all these fucking debts, get a real job, and live in the middle of nowhere with Poe. The smuggling life was only attractive and fun until he remembered moments like now, when peace was bled back into him. The rush of the missions helped him push through, made him believe that he was okay with all of this, but landing took all that away again. 

“Let’s go outside,” he said, something coming over him. He turned to Poe with a grin on his face. He didn’t want to just take off. They  _ did  _ have a little bit of time, he supposed. 

Poe looked at him over his coffee cup, eyebrows raised. “Outside? In the snow?” 

Finn nodded. “Do you know how long it’s been since I played in the fucking snow?” 

His boyfriend laughed and set his coffee down. “You know how some couples get tired of each other after a while?” He came over to him and wrapped his arms around Finn’s waist, pressing a kiss to his lips. Finn felt the cold and the fear drain out of him. “I’m never gonna get tired of you.” 

BB-8 started beeping, bumping into their legs. 

“Yeah, and I guess if I do, we’re stuck together anyway,” Poe agreed with them. “That coffee machine is yours, and I’m not giving up a damn good coffee machine.” 

Finn laughed. “I’m glad to know where we stand. Get some warm clothes on.”

Poe pulled himself away from Finn and they walked to the bedroom. “Do we even  _ have  _ snow clothes like that?” 

“We’ve got coats,” he said. “I’ll be satisfied once I’ve thrown a snowball at you.”

“You won’t hit me.”

“Oh, I won’t?” Finn asked challengingly. 

They threw their coats on and Finn rushed out to the door. He opened it for Poe, who gave a grand gesture of thanks. It was freezing outside, the snow falling in big flakes and Finn’s boots sinking in. It almost went up to his pajama pants, and he suddenly regretted not wearing three more pairs over the first. 

He reached down and grabbed a handful of snow, but before he threw it, he felt the same aching that he had when he was thinking about his dream earlier. He tried to hide it from Poe, not wanting him to worry about something as small as a dream, but he saw anyway. 

He came over to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “You okay?” 

“I’m fine,” he said. He grinned at him a little and shoved him playfully, a distance far enough that he could throw the snowball. 

Poe twisted so it hit the back of his coat, laughing and shaking his head. “You did that so you could hit me,” he said once it had hit, turning around and pointing an accusatory finger at him. 

Finn decided to go with that. It was easier than to explain that he was starting to have nightmares following him into the daytime. He grinned and said, “I did no such thing—”

A rumbling somewhere far away stopped him. They both turned to look in the direction of the noise, the hum of a ship. 

“Inside,” Poe said automatically, and the two of them rushed in, stripping their coats and forgetting their snow-caked boots as they rushed to their stations. BB-8 was beeping madly, and Poe ran over to the cockpit.

Finn flew down to the gun, mind whirring as he looked out, waiting for the ship to come over the hills into their line of sight. The whole ship hummed with the sound of takeoff and Finn positioned the gun in the direction that they had heard the noise, heart pounding and remembering how, before the sun illuminated the whole area, this snow-covered emptiness had been the most quiet they had gotten in a while. 

They flew in the opposite direction, and Finn didn’t question where Poe was going. He never did. He always trusted him to take them  _ away _ when they were running, or get them safely  _ to  _ when they were on the offensive. 

“I don’t see anything yet,” he reported over their comms. 

“That’s a good thing,” Poe said, like he was reminding Finn. “Maybe it’s just a mistake.”

“Let’s hope.”

They flew upwards, heading at high speeds for the atmosphere, and there, breaching the hills that they couldn’t see over before—there were a few ships, darker in color than their cheerier, but still inconspicuous home. And on the back, like the ships were beetles with colorful designs on their covering, was a vibrant, cobalt blue symbol: the symbol of Sashu, the Hutt that they had pissed off. So it wasn’t a mistake. 

“Poe, we need out of here,” Finn said urgently. They couldn’t shoot at Sashu’s lackeys, not unless they shot first. That would only further their debt—something that they had learned the hard way, mostly on accident. 

They quickly rose out of Eidera’s atmosphere, crossing the blue line that separated air from vacuum, and the stars merged into long, streaking lines as Poe went into hyperspeed.

The snowy planet was left behind, but Finn didn’t relax yet. They were never fucking safe out here, and he wouldn’t be surprised if, by some miracle, Sashu’s lackeys appeared right behind their ship again, ready to board or blast them out of the sky. His heart beat in his chest, and he almost wished that it was just some law enforcement pissed off that no-good smugglers were on their planet.

Those they knew would stay on the planet. Sashu’s people would search for them. 

“We have to drop off this shit,” Finn said. “I don’t wanna sit around any longer. We need to pay Sashu back.” 

He heard Poe’s sigh over the comms. “Yeah, I know.” 

Finn left the guns once they were out of hyperspeed and went up to the cockpit, sitting where the copilot would if they had a crew big enough. BB-8 moved aside, looking up at the two of them, and started beeping quietly. 

Poe looked down at them with pained eyes. “Yeah. Fuck.” 

Finn hadn’t heard all of what the droid said, but it sounded like  _ birthday.  _ And by the way Poe reacted, Finn could tell: it was Leia’s birthday. Poe always contacted his surrogate mother on her birthday, but this year, he knew he wouldn’t. She always worried, and he was sick of lying to her about what they were doing. She didn’t have the money to help them out, and Poe would be damned if he let her go into debt over them. 

But she was smart. When he didn’t call today, she would get in contact. 

Finn reached out and took Poe’s hand, and both of them looked quietly out at the stars, calming down for a moment as they drifted through the nothingness. They would need to stop for fuel once they reached Ruusan, the planet where they would be unloading their cargo—big boxes of  _ something  _ valuable that they had to bring in past the outer rim. Maybe venturing past the safety of this lawless land and into the Mid Rim would keep Sashu’s people off their tails. 

After a moment, Poe let go of Finn’s hand and began steering again, picking up the speed and keeping an eye on the fuel gauge. They would be cutting it close once they reached their destination. 

They flew for a while, Finn leaned back in his chair and looking at the stars flying past them as they headed to Ruusan. BB-8 milled around behind them, and Poe piloted. If it weren’t for the anxiety gnawing away at Finn, the knowledge that they were being tracked, it would’ve been a normal day. It would’ve been a normal mission. 

“When this is all said and done, let’s go back,” Poe said with a not-quite-happy smile. “Back to Eidera. We can have the heat however high you want it, and build a big house in the snow—”

“Closer to civilization than where we just were, I’d hope,” Finn added. 

He shut his eyes and pictured their house, their warm bedroom, their cozy kitchen with the coffee machine. The living room would only have a counter separating it from the kitchen, and they could lazily make their coffee in the morning or hot chocolate at night and clutch it close to their chests, leaning against each other and watching old movies like Poe loved to do. It would be even homier than the ship. 

BB-8 beeped and they both looked over at them. Poe smiled even more sadly at the droid. “Yeah, we’d still fly around all the time, buddy,” he assured them. 

BB-8’s response was something along the lines of “We’d fucking better.” Finn and Poe both laughed, and even though they were being followed, this was a kind of peace too. Out here among the stars, in their ship that they both loved, with the droid that Poe treasured at their sides. He was still on edge, nervous about more of Sashu’s ships finding them out there in the middle of nowhere, but it was the same kind of on edge that he had gotten used to from years as a smuggler. 

They flew for a while in silence, with nothing else to say. Finn wasn’t up for talking like he normally was. Even with the peace settling over him, he wasn’t up for joking about the last time they got into more exciting, funnier escapades. He didn’t like having a load of cargo in their ship when they didn’t even know what it was, but there was nothing they could do about it. It paid, and that was what they were doing anymore. He could see that Poe had his thinking face on. Probably about Leia. 

Finn eventually left the copilot’s seat. They weren’t far from their destination, especially not after their lightspeed jump. Poe told him half an hour, so he went back to the main hold and settled in one of the chairs there, gathering up his nerve. After they had the money from this job, they would be going straight to Sashu. The Hutt was always easier to deal with when he was getting paid, but Finn was never comfortable about the likes of him.  _ Slimy, greedy shits,  _ Rey always said. 

Rey. When they were done with this, when they were finally free to fuck off to wherever they pleased, he was sure their first stop would be Poe’s home—but their second would be Rey, if he had anything to do about it. His heart ached to see his best friend like it never had before. It hadn’t been that long, but he supposed the stress lately had worn away at him. He just wanted to be around the ones he loved for a while.

“Hey, babe, you ready to go?” Poe called to him.

“Yeah, almost,” he called back, standing and going to their room. He got out of his pajama pants and into something more appropriate for delivering cargo.

Before he even had both of his shoes back on, he heard BB-8 beeping loudly and the ship swerved. He fell against the bed and held his hands out, trying to keep himself from flying to the other side of the room. One of their loose blankets fell off the bed. As soon as they steadied enough, he ran straight to Poe. 

“What’s going—?” He looked out the window and saw one of Sashu’s ships, with its beetle-like top and symbol painted bright blue. “Oh, shit.” 

There was no point in going down to the guns, not when they couldn’t shoot. He watched as the ships followed and heard BB-8 beeping behind them but he wasn’t paying close enough attention to know what they were saying. 

“I’m gonna go through the asteroid belt,” Poe announced finally, his voice steady. 

“You’re—  _ what? _ ” he asked, wondering how he could even think that that was a possible solution. He was a damn good pilot, one of the best Finn had ever seen or flown with, but they couldn’t make it through a goddamn  _ asteroid belt.  _ They just weren’t that lucky. 

“Finn, they’re on our asses,” Poe said urgently, already turning the ship in the direction and picking up a bit more speed. “They’re bigger, faster, stronger. We don’t stand a chance. But we’re a smaller ship—we can make it, but they won’t even dare.” 

“Yeah, because they don’t want to die!” 

“We won’t die,” he reassured him, but Finn didn’t feel very reassured.

He knew there was no convincing him, knew from the look in his eyes, knew from their history. But he had never let their history stop him from trying before. “We can’t do this,” he insisted.

Poe looked over at him, and his eyes were duller than normal. This wasn’t their normal runaway; this was much more life-or-death. There was much more at stake. “What other choice do we have?” 

Finn didn’t have an answer, because they  _ didn’t  _ have another choice. If they turned around and headed back to the planet they were unloading on, Sashu’s ships would follow and stop them. If they tried to lightspeed away again, they would run out of fuel. They were trapped.

So he shut his mouth and stopped voicing his arguments, despite how little he wanted to veer into a field of big space rocks that could rip their ship in half. 

If they could be reasoned with, maybe they would understand Finn and Poe dropping their cargo off to get the money. Or maybe it wasn’t that they weren’t being reasonable at all—maybe it had something to do with what was in their cargo bay. He turned in that direction until the ship lurched again and his heart dropped into his stomach.

“Poe…” he breathed out, turning his attention forward again. It was like seeing two ships crash, or two speeders blow up on some fucked up gambling planet. He couldn’t look away, no matter how terrifying. 

“I’ve got this,” Poe promised him, voice level—steady. He was always steady when he needed to be. Normally there was laughter and shouting too, but always steadiness. Like an anchor. Finn wondered for a moment all the little unspoken ways that he anchored Poe back. 

They were in the asteroid belt now. The ship slowed, to give them more time to process the big rocks that were flying around them in what seemed like a random order. Something Finn had learned from their life, though, was that nothing was ever random. These big fucking rocks that seemed intent on blowing them to smithereens had a pattern they were following. A direction. Always in search of something to knock into. Something to stop their motion. For an asteroid, the whole point of being was to  _ end.  _ He could  _ feel  _ this, like something distant was trying to whisper it to him. Finn shut his eyes and breathed in slowly, finally looking away from the crash waiting to happen. He could still feel everything moving around them. Like it was the wind on his skin, or the snowflakes on his face back on Eidera—tangible, understandable. It was easier to process this way. Maybe this was how one thought before they died. Maybe this was how an asteroid would think, if it could. 

He looked over at Poe because it was better than thinking about the big space rocks with their patterns and their crashing. He looked at his eyebrows with their crease between them as he concentrated, and his nose a little scrunched up, his mouth open and ready to shout in excitement and victory the moment they were free.

This was their home. It was a pattern he could understand. Wake up in the morning, curled up against one another, body heat shared and kisses exchanged. Get up to get breakfast and coffee going, brush their teeth, get dressed. Go find something to run from, or run to, and laugh it off and try to forget about the endlessness that their lifestyle brought about. Call Leia and Han, call Rey and Rose. Talk to BB-8 and listen to them cuss about that fucking droid at the last stop that got them all scuffed up and then called them a “vulgar little man!” Dinner, movies, bedtime. How could something born for death intersect with their ship full of life? Finn hadn’t seen enough of the universe to understand the patterns behind one reckless death and another and another and another, and he didn’t think that he and Poe could possibly be part of that unquantifiable equation. 

But the universe has its own plans, and it didn’t matter at some point whether this was a place of warm mugs held in shivering hands to bundled-up chests after playing in the snow like children, whether this was a place where a little droid was loved so wholly by a pair of humans that they were a part of the family, whether this was a place of handholding and laughter and a warm bed with an overabundance of blankets for the nights when the heating system was iffy. At some point, all that mattered was that an asteroid was a collection of space rock and experience, and that experience had determined a pattern, and the pattern of their spaceship intersected with it.

The bang that came with the crash was sickening. It made Finn queasy with fear, and he looked with widened eyes first at Poe, then at BB-8, and then back behind them. No visible signs of crash from the cockpit, but it had sounded low. 

It had sounded like the direction, maybe, of the cargo bay. 

Finn’s eyes went to every screen they had, trying to assess damage. “Oh, fuck,” he breathed. It  _ was _ the cargo bay. 

Poe saw it too and his face fell, but he just kept navigating. The asteroid belt didn’t stop because they had gotten hit. 

There was no hole, but the blast doors had been damaged. Emergency protocols should’ve shut them as soon as they set in, but how long before they would set in? They hadn’t yet, and there was no way of knowing if anything had fallen out unless they—

Saw it floating through space. There was one of their big boxes, being knocked about by the asteroids. 

“Okay, okay, so—not a big deal, just—” Poe flicked a switch, one that would activate the beaming system and draw the boxes back to the ship. Finn could go open the doors and they could guide it back in. “Shit. Big deal.”

Finn looked at the readings and saw that the system that would beam their cargo back up to the ship had been damaged. So when Poe flicked it on, instead of the cargo drifting steadily back to them, it faltered in its course away from them, before breaking free and continuing on its own way. 

And it wasn’t just the one box now. The doors had closed, but Finn could see three of their six boxes floating now, and who knew if the other three were just out of their sight?

He stood up and held tightly to things along the wall as he walked in case Poe needed to jerk the ship. He hurried down the ladder into the cargo bay area and saw the flickering, sparking mess of the doors and lights down there, like strobe lights at a bar. During the flashes, he saw two boxes still sitting there. There was no way this would pay them enough to satisfy Sashu, even if they could make it to the unloading planet now.

* * *

 

Once they were out of the asteroid belt, their ship beaten up and nowhere to go but  _ away,  _ they were still running out of fuel. They couldn’t lightspeed away, and they might have made it to a nearby planet in time if they tried. They could have surrounded themselves by the public eye, where Sashu’s lackeys couldn’t attack them in front of the more civilized people of the inner rim. But they had seen Finn and Poe’s ship get hurt, had seen the cargo fly and get crumpled like aluminum cans as asteroid after asteroid beat it through the void. 

Before they could make it anywhere, the ship had made its way around the belt. The nearest planet was in sight when the ship came back on their radar. 

They were on Finn and Poe before either of them could even pretend to think of a plan. The beetle-like ship’s door on its underside opened up and tugged them into the belly of the beast. The hold was rather small, as their ship was probably the biggest thing that could fit into it, but they were still dwarfed by it. They both sat in the cockpit, frozen and helpless to do anything but wait until they could try to negotiate  _ something.  _

Once they were inside, they saw two people waiting at the doors of the hold, motioning curtly for them to come out. Finn looked over at Poe. Neither of them said a word, but their hands found each other as they went to the doors. 

BB-8 beeped behind them and Poe dropped Finn’s hand to kneel down in front of the droid. “No, buddy, you stay in here,” he said gently. “We’ll be back.” He patted the top of BB-8’s head and stood back up.

The bigger ship’s interior was all silver and white, very sleek and modern. Poe and Finn had scraped their ship together here and there over time, and it was all patchwork, the majority dark gray or deep blue, but their bedroom had a big patch of maroon wall, entirely because Poe saw the scrap of maroon metal and insisted that they needed to put it somewhere ridiculous. Their ship had accumulated from over time, and each inch of it was saturated with memories. As they were led through the high-ceilinged ship of their captors, Finn decided that there wasn’t even a ghost of a memory in these walls. They were completely impersonal, empty walls, for a group of people whose purpose was to steal the lives of those who offended their boss. 

Finn reached out so their fingers were interlocked slightly, afraid that they’d be separated once they were brought to the Hutt. He didn’t want to think of either of them being killed, but he knew that that was a possibility too. 

They were brought to where they would be held. The woman guiding them opened a nondescript black door like all the rest in the corridor and motioned them in without a word having been said. Once the door was shut on them again, they both sat down on the floor against the wall.

“I don’t know what to tell him,” Poe said, looking over at him. His head was leaned back against the wall and his eyes were searching Finn. 

Finn looked back at him and moved closer. He put an arm around Poe and got an arm around himself in return. “We don’t have the money,” he said quietly. “That’s all he’s going to hear, no matter what we say.”

“He’s going to ask for  _ something _ .”

Finn leaned his head on Poe’s shoulder. They both knew that there was no way out of this, and there was no use in trying to predict what was going to be asked of them or done to them. If either of them thought there was a way out, they would’ve brought their blasters out with them instead of letting the man and the woman silently guide them through the hallways to a cell. If this had been the first time Sashu had been angry at them, and they were in this exact position, maybe they wouldn’t be curled up against each other like there might not be a chance to later, but instead pacing the cells and thinking of a course of action. 

But they were both tired, and worn down, because this lifestyle wasn’t meant for them. But Poe belonged in the air and Finn had always been happier with a destination, and so settling down had never seemed compelling to either of them until it wasn’t an option anymore. 

Finn remembered that Han, Poe’s surrogate dad, used to be something of a smuggler before he settled down with Leia. He could see him doing it, could see him not making the same mistakes that Finn and Poe had made, but neither of them were Han Solo.

“I love you,” Poe said quietly, and it filled the silence of the cell to a bursting point, like it was echoing over and over. But maybe that was just inside Finn, where his heart ached and begged to be filled with anything but this fear. 

“Don’t say it like that,” he told him. He pulled away, just enough to look Poe in the eyes. “Like it’s… for good.”

“It’s not.” Poe didn’t sound convinced, and Finn knew that he wasn’t. “I just like saying it.”

Finn leaned his head back on Poe’s shoulder, satisfied even though they were both lying, to each other and to themselves. Saying it out loud made it real. Finn wondered why that was, how silence could be such a good cage for reality to be locked into when reality became too difficult for people to process. 

“I love you too,” he told him, and he hoped that it echoed around in Poe’s heart too. 

“We’re so bad at this job.” Poe’s fingers tangled themselves in Finn’s, every little touch tearing him away from this godforsaken starship more than the last. “I think it’s you. I think you pull me down.”

Finn grinned a little bit and turned his face so it was pressed against Poe’s shoulder, buried in the fabric of his jacket. He chuckled. “You’re the pilot,” he said, playing along. “Maybe you ought to fly faster sometimes.”

Poe shook his head, and even as Finn closed his eyes he could feel the movement. “No, no, no. You’re the gunsman. You should blow more shit up.”

“Hey, you can blow shit up too,” he reminded Poe. “Maybe it’s BB-8’s fault.”

Finn couldn’t see it, but he knew exactly what kind of aghast look would be on Poe’s face. It made him chuckle, just picturing his scrunched-up nose and creased eyebrows. “You insult my poor innocent droid?” 

“Your poor innocent droid who cusses like a sailor and threatens me once a week?”

“Hey, BB-8 probably only cusses because of you.” 

Finn laughed and pulled his head away from Poe’s shoulder, looking him in the eyes. “ _ Me?  _ I haven’t always understood binary, but I think BB-8’s probably been cussing since they were  _ made _ .”

Poe paused for a second before shrugging. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

It wasn’t long later when a different man than the one from before arrived at their door to let them out. They hadn’t said anything else, just leaned back against each other. They untangled themselves from their position now and stood up. Finn reached out and found Poe’s hand again, clinging, unsure. 

Through the light, impersonal hallways, there was no talking. The man in front of them had a hand poised over his blaster and Finn kept his eyes there. It made him wary, even though he knew it was only protection in case the two of them turned on him. But Sashu must have understood how fucked they were, if he wasn’t insisting on tight security around them. 

Sashu was outside of the ship when they exited, his home large and foreboding behind him. Finn hadn’t expected the Hutt to be waiting there for them. He was usually like all the rest of his species: ready to be brought his visitors as he lounged in his home, sickeningly wealthy and being served at all times. 

“Ah,” the Hutt greeted them, voice deep and rumbling, and eyes filled with the glee of having complete control over the situation and the two of them. “How are you, Finn, Poe?” 

Finn looked up at him and couldn’t hold back his resentment. The slimy, wrinkly slug may as well have bathed himself in money and yet he was still eager and even  _ amused  _ at having the opportunity to ruin another pair of lives over getting fucked out of a bit of money he didn’t really need. He was greed incarnate, as so many of the Hutts were, and Finn ached to pull out a blaster and tear his entire world and operation down. 

“Cut to the chase, Sashu,” Poe said dryly. “We fucked you over, you’re gonna fuck us over now. So what’ll it be?” 

“So eager,” Sashu said, laughing. His head tilted back with his laughter. Finn’s anger bubbled in his blood and felt like it was going to boil him from the inside out, but he stayed quiet and still, clenched the hem of his shirt in his hand and squeezed like it would alleviate any of this. “I assume you don’t have my money then, Dameron.” When neither of them answered, unwilling to play his game, he settled backward slightly, getting more comfortable in the warm sunlight of this planet. “I have ideas.” 

“And? What are they? You gonna kill us?” Poe snapped at him, letting some of his own anger through in his voice. “Because we really don’t have all day. If you’re gonna kill us, you should get on with it.”

Finn squeezed Poe’s hand slightly and took a breath. “Sashu, if you just give us a little bit more time,” he said. “We had a job but our cargo fell out in the middle of an aster—”

“I hate your excuses,” Sashu said, cutting him off and shaking his head. All that glee in his eyes was gone, and he was strictly business now. 

“So get to the bottom line,” Poe insisted.

“Okay,” Sashu said, moving aside. Finn glanced over at the doorway to the Hutt’s huge house. “I think I could easily get my money back with one sale. You know, carbonite sculptures fetch a good amount these days.” 

The asteroid struck the ship again, or it felt like it did. The same gut-wrenching sickness filled Finn’s stomach and he wanted to run away just like he had in that moment. This was so much harder to understand than pieces of space rock flying their predetermined routes because of space and physics and the universe, though. This was cruelty in a real being, a real creature, and it was all delivered in one sentence, all over six fucking boxes that Finn had never even looked inside, and a sum of money that they couldn’t pay back. 

“No,” Poe said, shaking his head and backing up.

“Which one of us?” Finn asked, ready to step forward and volunteer himself. He felt tears trying to form in his eyes and he clenched his jaw, steeling himself against this. “It should be me.”

Poe turned to him, the grip on Finn’s hand increasing tenfold. “ _ No.  _ No,” he said, shaking his head. “It should be neither of us.”

And of course it should be neither of them, just as stars shouldn’t die and forests shouldn’t burn and lakes shouldn’t dry up. But everything came to an end on every planet, in every solar system, and Finn felt something ending here. Maybe it was just the two of them, their hearts tied together, their hands clasped. Maybe it was his will, tired and lost and scared, nausea creeping in as he thought about being led into carbonite—or worse, as he thought of  _ Poe  _ being led in. Maybe it was a star, a million light-years away. 

“You can always buy the other back out of the carbonite, if you can find a selling point for the buyer,” Sashu said, chuckling as he turned toward his home and motioned to his men. Finn’s arms were grabbed and their hands were wrenched away from each other. He looked over at Poe and saw him struggling, fighting against the grip, and he yanked at the hands on his arms too. But there was no point. He felt something hit his head and the world dissipated.

* * *

 

He didn’t dream before he woke up, but just as he was coming to, there were more flashes, like that morning, but much less clear. Stormtroopers all around him, but he wasn’t afraid. A blue light. Rey, smiling, laughing, talking to him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying.

And then his eyes were open and he was standing over the carbonite chamber, hands restrained behind him in the chair he’d been left on. This wasn’t Sashu’s house, he was sure. There was no way the Hutt just had a carbonite chamber laying around. But maybe it was on one of his ships. It didn’t matter, wherever they were, not as he saw that Poe was standing over the middle of the chamber, the floor about to sink down.

“No!” he said, instinctively tugging at the restraints, pulling with all his might until his wrists hurt. “Poe!” He turned to the woman nearest to him. “You can’t do this. You can’t. Please, take me. Let me out, put me in his place.” 

Poe turned around to look at him, and the floor began to sink down. He tugged more, the metal threatening to dig into his wrists. “Finn,” he said, and he didn’t look desperate anymore. Finn guessed that he wouldn’t either, if he could at least know that Poe would be safe while he was encased. But his chest was in ribbons, the pain searing, and he wanted to scream as loud as he could until they did as he pleaded with them to do. 

The smoke erupted around the chamber as the freezing began and Poe was shrouded. Finn jerked and yelled his name, screamed for him, but it didn’t bring him back. The metal claw pushed down into the chamber and drew him out like he had never been anything more than a fucking abstract piece of art that some rich asshole would display as a trophy. Like he had never been a man, like he had never meant anything more to anyone than being a nuisance to his creditor. 

His face was twisted in agony in the big gray sheet that they let fall. And they took Finn out of the chair, not taking off his restraints, all but dragging him back through those empty hallways toward the hold. He looked behind him the whole time, like Poe might come back, like they might let him go. 

But Sashu’s men delivered him to his ship and undid his restraints. The other two wordlessly pointed blasters at him, puppets in the Hutt’s business, ready to kill him if he posed more of a problem than he already had.

Part of him wanted to slash and tear everything that he could get to down anyway, but instead, with rigid steps, he walked up to his ship, opening the door and entering slowly. And it was too fucking  _ cold  _ in the ship, as it always got when the heat wasn’t on. It turned off when they left, or when the asteroid hit them. It didn’t matter when, but it was freezing, and there was no warm body to share heat with here.

BB-8 beeped up at him, coming over and bumping into his shins.

“They froze him,” he said, drifting over to the cockpit. Sashu’s ships large doors were opening, allowing him to fly out and leave the planet. Go wherever.

Where would he go? 

BB-8 was still asking him questions, still confused, but Finn couldn’t focus hard enough to hear what he was saying. He was exhausted. “In carbonite, BB-8,” he said. He looked down at the little droid and knelt down in front of him. “He’s— They’re gonna sell him.” He shut his eyes and felt the tears finally slip past. “We have to—  _ buy him back _ .” If they even could.

BB-8 was frozen for a moment, and Finn knew their head was about to drop. He reached out and put a hand on top, like Poe always did, and then stood up, going to the cockpit. He couldn’t watch BB-8 mourn, couldn’t listen to them rage. He just needed to get out. He needed to get fuel. He needed to— to see Leia.

He got out and he flew, keeping an eye on the fuel gauge. He flew, and after a moment he yelled, and he cried until his eyes were blurry and he could barely see outside, and he damned every Hutt who had ever been born. And he flew. 

Poe was frozen, and he was screaming, and asteroids were hitting each other and ships and planets all over the universe, and he flew. 


End file.
